Yeah, but what if you NEED one of those odd flies? Say, that couple of #18 brown bodied CDC mayflies you tied to match a hatch on a creek you have never been back to, and lo, whilst fishing a run on the Lochsa, had a hatch of something very similar come off, and there they were in the box, ready for use!

Just a thought. Like you (and many other anglers) I end up using the same dozen patterns to catch 95% of my fish, even though I have hundreds of OTHER flies in the boxes in my pack.

I am going to redo some October Caddis for Idaho next year. Discovered the fish prefer the natural dun CDC to the tan stuff. And so now I have two dozen remaining tan ones and three or four remaining dun ones. Well, and a box of 100 hooks for the next batches...